The present invention relates in general to facing elements, and in particular to a new and useful facing element for floors, ceilings, walls and the like.
European Patent Document EP 406 991 A1 discloses a facing element of this type. A honeycomb carrier plate comprises regular hexagonal honeycombs. The edges of the carrier plate and a cover plate are flush, which also applies for a stone plate. Consequently, the four plates of the facing element are on all four sides in contact with the same imaginary lateral contact plane. In the case of a floor plate covering, this known facing element requires an adhesive type floor fastening since otherwise due to the absence of a form-fit interdigitation of the facing plates, no surface alignment can be achieved. For wall facings, these facing plates have anchoring means on the rear side with which they can be suspended from a wall fastening rail. Between the individual facing elements of a wall covering of this type remain gaps through which rain water can penetrate into the hollow space between the facing plane and the building wall. Due to the individual suspension of the facing plates, relative motions of the facing elements can occur in the event of wind incident and, depending on the type of suspension, the development of noise through the possibility of relative motion of the plates is also not excluded. In the known facing element the carrier plate and the two cover plates comprise aluminum, and the stone plate is fastened in spots by adhesive means to the upper cover plate and additionally mechanically anchored on the carrier plate.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,601,147 discloses a facing element in which a carrier plate comprises a continuous bottom with a number of webs projecting upwardly from it, on which the stone plate is fastened. The width of the carrier plate and the stone plate is identical, however, the carrier plate comprises at one end of its length a push-in tongue to which is assigned at the other end a lead-in groove for the push-in tongue of an adjacent plate. The carrier plates consequently engage each other in a form-fit manner in their longitudinal directions, however, in the transverse direction longitudinal joints result between the rows of facing elements with the disadvantages described above. In large-format facing elements the carrier plate implementation with the majority of parallel bearing webs has a disadvantage in comparison to a honeycomb bearing element because the stone plate between two bearing webs is not supported over the entire web length.